A Sudden Parting
It was nineteen years ago that I fell into this world.
When I opened my eyes, I was sprawled face-down on a mountain path, dirt packed into my mouth and blood seeping from my knee.
Only moments before, I had been lying on the bed in my studio apartment, scrolling through my phone.
When I came to, my body had become that of a child of five or six, and words I had never once learned came spilling out of my mouth.
At first I thought it was a dream.
Even when I was crying from hunger and clutched the trouser leg of a passing woodcutter, even when I followed him down to the village and was handed a thin gruel of rice porridge.
I was sure I'd wake up and be back.
But the next day came, and the day after that, and nothing changed.
Then, about a fortnight in, it happened.
A person came flying over my head as I gathered firewood in the yard.
Or rather — a person riding atop a sword.
I stared up at the sky, the firewood tumbling from my arms. The man who had taken me in, Uncle Yu, only glanced at the sight and said, unconcerned:
"First time seeing a cultivator?"
That was when I understood.
Just what kind of world I'd fallen into.
A place where people lengthened their lives through cultivation, flew across the heavens, and strove at last to become immortals.
It was the world of a xianxia novel — the kind I'd once read to kill time.
Of course, knowing that didn't make anything special happen to me.
No status window appeared before my eyes, and no fortuitous encounter burst out of any pebble I happened to pick up.
What I needed right then was food, and what I had to do was stack the firewood before Uncle Yu came home.
And so I lived like that for nineteen years.
"Looking at the gate again?"
I turned at the voice behind me.
Baekha stood there with a basket on her hip. She must have been on her way back from the market, because leafy greens poked up over the rim.
"It seems like it's leaning."
"Which way?"
"The right side's settled a little, hasn't it?"
Baekha stepped up beside me and studied the gate. She narrowed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head.
"I can't tell."
"You'd see it up close."
"That's only because you've been staring at it for three days."
I had no answer to that.
It really had been three days.
I lowered my hand from the gate panel and took the basket from her. Baekha dusted off her palms as if she'd been waiting for the chance, then peered into the open gate at the yard beyond.
"Is the inside all done?"
"Just one more pass on the bedroom floor."
"You finished that yesterday, didn't you?"
"The room you'll sleep in should be smoother. What if you catch a splinter?"
Baekha laughed.
Then she plucked a sliver of bark from my sleeve.
"Then do yours too."
"Why mine?"
"Because I might be going over to your room."
I looked at her for a moment.
Baekha feigned innocence and wandered into the yard, the tips of her ears faintly red.
Twenty-three this year.
The only daughter of Uncle Yu, who had taken me in — and the woman I was to marry in two months.
The first time we met, she hid behind her father and wouldn't even look at my face properly. Somewhere along the way she'd grown old enough to say things like that without a hint of embarrassment.
Not that we'd always been like this.
When we were young, she was simply a little kid I had to look after in her father's stead — hauling her out of the creek when she fell in, and soothing her back home when she threw a tantrum about tagging along to the mountain.
We only started to see each other differently a few years after Baekha came of age.
As Uncle Yu's back gave out, I took over the household chores, and Baekha made dinner while she waited for me to return.
More and more evenings, even after the meal was over, we still had things to say, and ended up sitting side by side on the porch.
The day word came of a marriage proposal from a neighboring village, I couldn't focus on my axe work from morning to dusk.
In the end, it was Baekha who spoke first.
She asked whether it would be fine by me if she married another man.
I told her it would not.
"Let's put the jar here."
Standing in the corner of the yard, Baekha prodded the ground with her toe.
"When it rains, the water drips right off the eaves onto this spot."
"Then move it forward a little."
"It'll get tangled with the clothesline."
"...I built the whole house for you, and I can't even pick where the jar goes?"
Her pouting lips drew a laugh out of me.
"Put it wherever you like. We can just move the clothesline."
Only then did she look satisfied.
I carried the basket into the kitchen. The smell of fresh timber rose from the stove hearth, where no pot had yet been hung.
Buying the abandoned house on the village outskirts and fixing it up had taken a solid half-year.
We stripped the roof, replaced the rotten pillars, and packed every gap in the walls so the winter wind couldn't slip through. Nearly ten years of savings went into it.
But I didn't regret a single coin.
There had been a time when I stared at the stars every night, swearing I'd find my way back. There had been a time when I thought that becoming a cultivator might offer some way, any way.
But living day to day taught me the truth.
For an ordinary person, merely meeting a cultivator was difficult enough — and meeting one didn't mean they'd take you as a disciple.
I had someone to eat my meals with, and chores waiting for me tomorrow.
I didn't want to abandon all of that for a road with no promises on it.
"Can I come by with Father tomorrow?"
"Of course. I've lowered the doorsill, too."
"He'll love that."
Baekha gave the freshly planed doorsill a light test with her foot.
I stood beside her and looked over the yard.
This would do.
Married in spring, checking for leaks in summer, and stacking plenty of firewood before winter came — that was the plan.
Then someone shouted from outside the gate.
"Jinwoo-hyung! Are you here?"
It was the neighbor's youngest.
He'd sprinted the whole way, panting hard, and Baekha asked before I could.
"What's the matter?"
"A cultivator's come! The village chief says everyone has to gather!"
I met Baekha's eyes.
In all my memory, this was the first time a cultivator had come to our little village in person.
People were already crowding into the clearing in front of the village chief's house.
Even those who should have been out in the fields had all turned out. Children poked their heads between the grown-ups' legs, and the village chief bowed and scraped again and again.
Before them all stood a single man.
My first impression was less cultivator than idle playboy.
The collar of his purple silk robes hung loosely open, a small wine flask dangled from his belt in place of a sword, and one ear bore a red earring.
The only tidy thing about him was his hair, tied back at the nape.
He was far removed from the Taoist I had imagined.
"That's him?"
Baekha whispered.
I nodded, and the two of us took our place at the back of the crowd.
The man kept tipping his flask while the villagers gathered. Only after the chief had timidly addressed him did he lower it.
"Is everyone here?"
"Yes, Master. Except for the elders who cannot walk, nearly all of—"
"Then that's fine. This won't take long."
The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I'm Namhyeon. I've received orders from my sect this time to find a child worth taking in as a disciple."
Tucking the flask back into his belt, he looked over the crowd.
"I'll only be checking for a spirit root. I won't force anything unpleasant on anyone, so there's nothing to fear."
The village chief called the children forward.
Some parents shoved their sons toward the front; others hastily smoothed down their daughters' hair. At the promise of a chance to become a cultivator, even the grown-ups' faces had flushed with excitement.
Namhyeon took the children's wrists one by one as they approached.
But with most of them, he let go the moment he'd touched them.
"Nothing."
"You neither."
"Hm. Not this one either."
With each curt verdict, another set of parents' shoulders sagged.
Baekha leaned toward me.
"Can he really tell just by touching them like that?"
"Apparently."
"Amazing."
She rose onto her tiptoes.
The shoulder of the person in front blocked her view. I shifted sideways to make room for her to see.
That was the moment.
Namhyeon, in the middle of releasing a child's wrist, looked this way.
I thought his gaze had met mine — but it hadn't.
He was looking beside me.
"Just a moment."
Namhyeon started walking.
The villagers scrambled out of his path in both directions, and in an instant a lane opened straight to where we stood.
Baekha grabbed my sleeve, alarmed.
Namhyeon stopped in front of her.
"Give me your hand."
"Pardon?"
"There's something I need to check."
Baekha hesitantly held out her hand.
Namhyeon's fingers touched her wrist.
His half-lidded eyes shifted, just slightly.
"...So this is where you've been hiding."
He studied Baekha's face again.
"Your name?"
"Yu Baekha."
"Your age."
"Twenty-three."
Namhyeon laughed low in his throat.
"Late, but no matter. You have more than enough aptitude to make up for it."
A murmur rose behind us.
Baekha's face said she had no idea what he was talking about.
"You come with me."
Namhyeon said.
"Taught properly, you could go far."
Baekha pulled her wrist free and turned to look at me.
"I'm to be married soon, sir."
Only then did Namhyeon's gaze land on me.
One slow look, up and down.
And that was all.
"Marriage can wait."
"Just a moment, please."
I stepped half in front of Baekha.
"If you ask us to leave so suddenly, surely we could be given time to discuss—"
I didn't finish.
My shoulders grew heavy.
It felt as though someone were pressing down on me from above, and my knees buckled. I clenched my teeth, but my body refused to obey.
"Jinwoo?"
Baekha seized my arm.
Namhyeon was still smiling.
"It's a good opportunity, no? You ought to think of her future."
I tried to open my mouth.
My breath gave out first.
Baekha's grip tightened on my arm. She'd noticed too — her face, darting between me and Namhyeon, had gone white.
"I'll go."
She said it hurriedly.
"I'll go, so please — stop."
Only then did the weight pressing down on my shoulders vanish.
I coughed and dragged in air.
Baekha rubbed my back. Her voice, asking if I was all right, was trembling.
I had to hold on to her.
But before I could reach out, Namhyeon laid a hand on Baekha's shoulder.
"The village chief can inform her father."
Wind rose from beneath their feet.
Baekha opened her mouth, trying to say something to me.
Her face was gone in an instant.
Below my hand, clutching at empty air, a single hair tie fell — the one she'd handed me on her way back from the market.
And then...
Ah.
Yes.
That was when the vicious delusions began...
First chapter
Latest chapter